2 Percent of Australia’s Raspberry Pi Devices Are Apparently at Music Hack Day Sydney

One of the two hacker-friendly Raspberry Pi computers at Music Hack Day Sydney (photo: Eliot Van Buskirk)

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Raspberry Pi is a fairly raw computer that a bit larger than a credit-card that costs $25, and which hackers can turn into a wide variety of things. It’s a blank canvas, making it perfectly suited to the hardware hackers at Music Hack Days such as the one happening today here in Sydney.

We’re only a few hours into this weekend-long hackathon, where attendees get very little sleep as they work on music apps to present to each other in functional form by Sunday evening, so it’s too early to say how these things will be used.

What we do know: There are two Raspberry Pis here, and according to someone who claims to know, the devices at this 50(ish)-person hack day constitute two percent of all such devices in the entire country.

“Only 100 were sent to Australia,” said Filter Squad developer and Sydney Music Hack Day participant Darcy Laycock, “and we have two of them here.”

That’s a fairly impressive ratio for an event of this size. Will these things turn into musical instruments? Bicycle theramins? Hipster detectors, perhaps?

We look forward to finding out what happens to them; we’ve heard a rumor that one might be transformed into a software-powered radio.